KIRKUS REVIEW

Discovered by scientists in the
Canadian Arctic and later adopted, a group of speechless but intense and
powerful teens compel their older siblings to return them to that site a decade
and a half later.

With their scientist parents in
Ecuador, Lorna, 17, is responsible for her sister, Callie, an Arctic Recovery
Orphan. Constructing an ingenious model of their destination (à la Richard
Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third
Kind), Callie persuades Lorna to take her there. Lorna and Stan, whose ARO
brother is similarly obsessed, shoulder the task. Packing snacks, warm clothes,
and phone charger, the four leave Pennsylvania—guided by the AROs (Lorna names
them Icelings)—and head northeast, meeting and joining with other sibling
groups along the way. At a police checkpoint, only those traveling with AROs
are permitted to cross into Canada. One driver, Bobby, might know what’s at
stake, but he’s not sharing. Lorna, Stan, and the rest, mystified but loyal,
follow their siblings’ leads. Readers will be equally confused: by the strange
geography (Meat Cove, Nova Scotia, is nowhere near the Arctic) and confusing,
contradictory plot. Long interior monologues fail to explain Lorna’s
senseless—at times, risibly so—choices. Otherworldly discoveries are rendered
in mundane imagery, while the identically pale, light-eyed, fair-haired Icelings
suggest pallid takes on John Wyndham’s The
Midwich Cuckoos (1957) and
its comic-book and video game progeny. Narrator Lorna indicates no racial
distinction between her and her sister, leading readers to believe she is
white.

Faced with the inconsistent
plotting, indifference to geography and climate, and sloppy execution, readers
are more likely to abandon this series opener halfway than to wait for Volume 2.
(Science fiction. 12-16)

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